Up until 2009, social media was exciting because it worked. It was all about the user experience. Twitter was hot, and that made it easy to make connections and get your ideas discovered and shared.

The value of history is it reminds us what’s possible. So much of the social media landscape has changed, but the foundation of search that it’s built on has not.
Google ranks content using hundreds of factors, but they can all be sorted into two categories: authority and relevance.

Your marketing must communicate relevance and authority to the people your business serves. If it can do that, it will stand out on and offline.

An easy way to connect with your audience

Mark Zuckerberg recently introduced a puzzling term that he’s taken a liking to: reduced permanence. It means disappearing content. Where Facebook is going with this doesn’t matter. Your job is to use what Facebook gives you to make your business stand out.

I’m taking this to be an opportunity to pay less attention to building a digital footprint and get back to what made social media work in the beginning: authentic engagement.

It’s why I’ve recently started warming up to Instagram stories. (Facebook owns Instagram.)

Instagram stories are snapshots of what’s happening in your life (or business) through photos and videos. The next day, they’re gone, so any goofs are scrubbed from your profile.

What’s the point, then? It’s connecting with people, reminding them of your relevance and hopefully growing your audience. It’s giving people light, interesting content they can enjoy. Some call this snackable content.

Not long ago, I was trying to figure out how Instagram stories work. Evidently, I left the app open while setting my mobile phone down before going to sleep.
I woke up to dozens of likes because I accidentally recorded a short video of my pillow the night before. Oops!

Some people were confused but most were amused. It was honest and real, and that’s what engages people.

Here’s a great resource I wish I’d discovered sooner: “The Ultimate Guide To Instagram Stories For Business” (later.com/blog/instagram-stories-for-business).

Evergreen pages that boost SEO

As we enter a social media world of reduced permanence, I’m reminded of a social media marketing maxim: Don’t build your house on rented land.

You need content that speaks to your authority that is housed on a site you own. That’s your website.

If you are fortunate to have a base of content — and everybody has something — then start with that. Take inventory of all the valuable content, then update and reorganize it to make it better and more discoverable. Much of the work has been done, so it should not be difficult to step it up a notch.

The idea is to perform content marketing triage. Sort your content into what is still relevant, what can be partially used and what has little or no value.
Identify your best blog posts and rewrite them to be relevant for the foreseeable future. Do the same with video. Record new videos that are better than what is currently your best.

Just be mindful of making your new content evergreen. Remove dates and any mentions that might soon make it outdated.

Don’t delete any of your content because it may still be generating traffic. Instead, forward that content’s link to a more valuable, rejuvenated piece of content.

Finally, consider aggregating your content into evergreen pages that address big, sought-after topics. The previously mentioned “The Ultimate Guide To Instagram Stories For Business” is a perfect example. The content menu chapter links from earlier blog posts give this highly ranked guide an SEO boost.

Relevance and authority may sound like fluffy marketing speak to you. They are in fact your power. This is why Google has never wavered from using them as the leading basis for ranking content.

If anything has changed from the early days of social media, it’s the insatiable appetite for visual content. It turns out it’s never been easier to make it.
Let it disappear. The impression it makes will be remembered. That’s all you care about.